There’s a lot of news about rice in this issue. This makes sense considering its starring role in the production of sake, however recent news also highlights the unique role rice plays in Japanese culture.
We know the wine world revolves around grapes. However the grapes used for wine and those grown for eating rarely have much crossover. And when there is a bad harvest of wine grapes, winemakers don’t really look over the fence and start making wine with grapes normally used for making raisins.
Imagine if the table grape industry were to be in trouble leading to soaring grape prices and short supply. There’d be some disappointed grape eaters for sure, but it would hardly cripple France, Spain, Italy’s or any other wine producing country’s culinary culture.
In Japan however, rice is everything. And many sake breweries do use table rice for their sake. There is crossover and in the event of a tug of war over rice stocks between sake breweries and restaurants and Japanese households, you can be sure the sake industry would lose. Nihonshu is important to Japanese culture and its people, but not more important than rice.
As long as Mother Nature and climate change keep throwing spanners in the rice farming works, there will need to be some serious steps taken to counter or adapt to these supply shortages and price rises.
And now for the news…
Japan- As the rice shortages and price increases continue, Japan has increased its imports of rice to a record 468 tons.
The figure shows the desperation of the industry as the increase comes despite government-imposed tariffs of JPY341 (USD2) per kilogram on privately imported rice – originally implemented to protect the domestic market.
Koshihikari rice rose by 4% per 5kg in February to JPY4363. The price has been rising for 10 months consecutively to reach an 80% increase since May 2024.
The government will be releasing stocks of reserve rice through an auction process with stocks set to reach shelves by the end of March. Until then prices are not expected to fall.
The Reserve Rice (Bichikumai) System was established after a record low shortage experienced in 1993.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the private sector imported 523 tons of rice during the last month, whereas private sector imports in the last fiscal year were 368 tons.
Source – NHK | Maff
JG: Indeed, this topic is all over the news (although the word “dominating” would be an exaggeration). The big question is, what is the government doing to ensure this does not continue into next year? Eating rice is 98 percent of all rice production, so they must be considering some action. Let’s hope it is effective and that things improve.
Yamagata- The Yamagata Prefectural government has stepped in with a helping hand to curb the recent rise in rice, and subsequent sake price by offering subsidies on sake rice purchase for breweries leading into the new fiscal year. The prefecture plans to subsidize up to 50 percent of the cost of local sake rice.
